Back Door

A four-panel timber door hangs on rusted hinges in one of the slab huts at Woolla, the opening framed by horizontal split-slab walls and a corrugated iron ceiling sagging slightly between rough-hewn beams. Plaster crumbles from the stonework chimney breast on the right. Thin blades of daylight cut through the gaps between the wall boards and fall in pale lines across the bare floor. The slabs are fitted tight against each other and held in place by the framing behind them. The door is the youngest piece of joinery in the room, and even that is older than living memory. Beyond the threshold, the home paddock runs back toward the bush line.

Woolla sits on the Deua River near Braidwood, in southern NSW. Helena (Nellie) Davis took up the freehold in 1910, and the original huts were completed in 1927, hand-built from horizontal split slabs of local timber under a corrugated iron roof. The roofing was brought in by horse-drawn slide over country too rough for vehicles until well into the 1960s. The Davis family lived here in continuous occupation until 1990. Vern and Neta were among the last Australians to live a colonial-style rural life through to its actual end. The huts survived the 2019 to 2020 Black Summer bushfires intact and are in safe hands under the current owner. Brett photographed the back door at Woolla on 29 December 2021.